The Risen
by zenith020388
Summary: I know it was a tiny thing. I was essentially giving Crayak a 'free move'... But I still feel my children's pain. And it is a small thing, really, that will end that pain... I hope I am not damning myself to failure, in the name of love...
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I own nothing written here but the words themselves. All credit for established Animorphs material goes to KA Applegate. I'm just dabbling in her sandbox... So to speak...

**Animorphs: The Risen**

**Prologue**

I waited for it. It did not take long. Two Earth years bafore I had my chance. Crayak bent a rule, and I was thus allowed to bend one myself. Our fifth, and final, great game was just beginning, and already, he was making grandiose moves, changing the paths of comets containing certain radioactive elements, altering global temperatures and tilting axis' by large degrees.

We stood tied, two great games apiece. I had won the last two, one by virtue of his own stupidity, and this last through the actions of six mortal children.

My children.

I waited. And then he did it.

I won't bother explaining what it was. It would take too long to do that. Sufficed to say, he pushed too far, and thus, I was allowed to push back. All moves in balance, between us.

Fair is fair.

And I knew what I wanted to do. My perception turned deliberately away from the last galaxy in this game, back across the infinity to the last one. I saw my children. The five who remained, at least.

And I felt their pain.

So I righted what was wrong.

"You are a fool, Ellimist." Crayak sneered, leering at me with that bloody red eye of his. "That game is finished. You already won. What could you possibly gain by changing it after the fact, hmm?"

I shook my 'head', clucking my teeth at him, a gesture I'd picked up millennia ago, which I knew annoyed him greatly. "All things in time, gentle Crayak." I mocked, watching as the strand of time brightened and twanged back into place. "All in good time..."

* * *

It was just... Gone. I don't know how to explain it. One second, I was whispering my last to the man I loved, and the next, I was sitting on a crowded bus.

And nobody even noticed.

It was hard to keep my mouth shut as I raged inside my head. _Where am I? What happened to the blade ship? Did Jake succeed? Where AM I???_

That's about when I noticed the stores we were passing looked familliar. And a second later, I saw a street sign that confirmed my suspicions.

I was home.

"Am I dead?" It was hardly a whisper, and only one person on the bus noticed, an older man who cocked his head to the side and smiled a crooked smile.

"I sometimes ask myself the same thing, young lady..." He croaked, chuckling. "But then I look around, and I remember that I'm not."

Something about that old man seemed so disturbingly familliar... I forced a smile. "I guess you're right..."

"Besides, it's a great day to be alive today!" He continued. "Parties and speeches and dancing! A good ole fashioned holiday!"

"Oh? And what holiday is that?"

He frowned at me, and I instantly regretted opening my mouth. "What holiday? Where've you been for the past two years, girl? In a coma?"

_Two years?_ "I guess you could say that..." I replied, trying to keep my cool. _Is this guy a controller? Did we... Loose?_ "I've been... Out of touch with the world... So to speak..." _Information. I need more information._

"Ah. One of them nature types, then..." He shrugged. "It's V-Day, little miss."

"V-Day...?"

"Yeah. Victory over the Yeerks."

My heart stopped in my chest.

"Vic... What?"

The old guy launched into a grand retelling of the last three years. Apparently, he was a reall research nut, and was very knowledgeable on the invasion and subsequent events. He told the story with grand sweeping gestures and dramatic pauses, and some of the other passengers started to get into it too. And me? I just sat there, dumbstruck.

And then he told me something else. Something that froze my heart in my chest yet again.

I was dead.

I died a hero's death, stopping the last menace in his tracks. And then, the Blade Ship had been destroyed.

I was dead. And Tobias was missing.

My name is Rachel. And I am most certainly _not_ dead.

* * *

A/N: Sigh... Just another day, another fanfic... I recently re-read the entire series, trying to reclaim some of my childhood, and finally read the last five books for the first time. I'm a little upset at how it all ended, and especially with how some of the characters ended up. *CoughRachelTobiasJakeCough* Ahem... 'Scuse me. So here's one of two stories I'm throwing down. This one is an 'Ellimist brings Rachel back after the war' attempt. Don't worry. I think I can make it interesting-slash-unique. Stay Frosty. -E. Red


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I own nothing written here but the words themselves. All credit for established Animorphs material goes to KA Applegate. I'm just dabbling in her sandbox... So to speak...

**Animorphs: The Risen**

**Chapter I**

It was... I don't really know how to describe it, I guess. Unreal seems to fit...

I got off the bus close to my old house, but the place was dark, and deserted. There was a large plaque on the porch, declaring my home a national historic building.

Dedicated in loving memory of Rachel Amelia Berenson.

Gone, but never forgotten...

There were a lot of people around. I guess it was a tourism thing, coming to see the home of one of the 'heroes of the hidden war', as the old man had called it. The irony of my full name being printed on a plaque, and posted on my front door no less, was not lost on me. Any of these people could have been former Controllers. And they were coming to my house...

I wandered for the rest of the day, kind of in a daze. Coming back to life kinda messed me up a little, I guess. Not that it shouldn't, right? I mean...

I guess I shouldn't be asking anyone about coming back to life, huh...

The city had changed a lot, in the apparent two years of my absence. The area where the yeerk pool had sunk half of downtown was now a massive green field, a park that was surrounded on all sides by a man-made lake. There was a huge crowd there, and a giant, four-way screen stage set up in the middle. Like some kind of concert.

I'm not sure what it was. I just couldn't bring myself to go in. To join that crowd in their celebration. The war was too real to me. It had... Consumed me. Turned me into something... Less than human...

I ducked behind a nearby convenience store and tried to compose myself. It's difficult to explain how I felt in those first few hours. I had been dead for two years, killed in the final minutes of the war, and was now apparently a global hero, publicly remembered and, apparently, grieved. Posters on the fences behind that store advertised a V-Day concert and a direct broadcast of the ceremony in DC. And here I was. Alive. And in a strange new world. A world where 'Psycho Rachel' was no longer needed.

The whole thing was just weird. I mean, here I was, standing above the ruins of the Yeerk pool, watching people celebrating the fall of the Yeerk invasion force, and lauding praise onto the young heroes who set the world free...

_Get a grip, girl. You're alive. Now find out what's happened. _I shook myself a little, to clear my thoughts, and stepped into the crowd. _Recon... Let's do it..._

The place was teeming with life. Hundreds of people, dozens of barbecues, picnic tables, loud music, dancing. It was pretty wild. There was laughing and cheering, but here and there, I also saw sadness. Grief. Loss. These were the survivors of my war. People scarred by alien parasites and native animals. One man I passed even had an eye patch, a very distinctive scar pattern showing where a bird of prey had torn out his eye.

_Tobias..._

And that was what I noticed. None of us were here. Marco, Cassie, Ax... Jake... And...

_Two years gone, and you think they wouldn't move on without you? They're stronger than that, Rachel..._

Didn't make it hurt any less...

I must have wandered around for an hour before I noticed the music and voices start to die down. The screens on the center stage flickered on, and my breath caught in my throat.

There they were. Two years had changed tham, but their faces were unmistakable.

Marco looked just like he had. The same stupid grin, the same relaxed posture. Of course, his mother and father both standing behind him certainly helped that. He actually regained his family through the war. But it had changed him for the better. He seemed much more confident, and at ease. Like he owned the stage...

And Cassie... Poor, gentle Cassie... The best friend I pushed away during those last days. She just looked older. You could see it behind the fake smile. Pain. She was suffering, as always, in silence. But there she was, trying to be strong for a world that wanted to see her.

And between them, most surprisingly, was not our 'fearless leader'. It was Ax. He had grown a bit, and stood with a confidence and purpose that made me smile. Our young alien friend had finally come into his own. No longer a cadet, I could tell. He was just as great a hero among his own people as we were here on earth. I could see it in his stance. But, more than that, I could still see the trust in his eyes. He had lost some of it before the final battle, but it was back now. And that was good...

But that was it. No sign of my cousin... No sign of...

"People of Earth." It was some guy. I guess he was the President. Must have been elected while I was... Away... "Today marks another year passed from the historic end of the Hidden War." Cheering. "And with another year gone, we pause now to remember the lessons learned. We pause to remember those who were lost. Innocents, caught up in an invasion and unable to do anything about it. Family members, who sacrificed themselves so that others might remain free. And heroes, who fought to keep us all free and safe." More cheering.

"Today, we remember the Animorphs." You all have _no_ idea how... _Wierd _it was, hearing that word... Our word, spoken by the leader of the free world... "We remember six individuals who took it upon themselves to keep us all from complete disaster." Cassie was blushing. I could tell. "We remember how they stopped the invasion. How they freed slaves, and stopped the advance of numerous fronts of the invasion. And how they destroyed the Yeerk's base of operations on Earth, taking their mothership and ending the war over the course of two days."

"And we remember the sacrifice." Oh, God, no... "We remember one young woman who gave her life to ensure the last pocket of potential threat would be eliminated. Today, not as a country, but as a species, we celebrate our freedom. And we remember miss Rachel Berenson."

Silence. Deafening silence. The whole park was quiet, and the screens showed the huge throng of people that covered The Mall in DC. All silent. All remembering.

All for me.

Part of me was angry at being made such a spectacle of. Another part felt nothing but pride. Yet another felt lonely. But all this was interrupted right then, by the least likely of happenings.

"Oof!" I had been wandering around aimlessly, the broadcast from DC well finished and the concert underway, when someone barrelled into me, knocking us both to the ground.

"Hey! Watch it lady!" It was a voice I was not prepared to hear.

"Sara...?" My sister. My little baby sister. Two years at her age made an incredible difference, but she was unmistakable. Eyes that I remembered so well looked up into mine, and when I saw the flicker of recognition, and her face go completely pale, I panicked. And ran.

* * *

Sara's mind restarted as she watched the mass of blond hair disappear into the crowd. "Rachel..."

She knew she could have been imagining it again. She had a few times, just after... Well... But this time... She could feel her. She had touched her. And, looking in her eyes, she had seen recognition.

Her sister was _alive._

"MOM! DAD!"

"Sara?" Her parents both stood up at the sound of her voice, and her father scooped her up as she ran into his arms, crying. "What is it? What's wrong, sweetie?"

"I saw her." She sobbed. "She was there, and then she ran away, and I couldn't stop her..."

Her mother turned away and sat back down. This day was hard enough for her without having to deal with Sara's 'encounter'. Her husband sat down with their youngest daughter, gently rocking her back and forth as he tried to calm her down. The two of them had gotten back together after the end of the war, more for the two remaining daughters than anything else.

"Sara, we've been over this before..."

"No! I really saw her! I bumped into her! She was real! I looked and it was _her_! I swear it!"

"Shhh... Okay, sweetie... Just calm down and we'll go look..." He glanced over at his wife. "We'll go look..."

But of course, they would never find her...

* * *

I ran. Of course I ran. What else could I do? I come back to life, and the first person I run into is my baby sister?

Reality sucks, especially when it hits you in the face.

I had no idea what to do.

And I had nobody to _tell_ me what to do...

I ran for an hour, maybe more. I just wanted to get away. This was too big for me...

But as I ran, I noticed something. I wasn't going anywhere. Not in the grand, metaphorical sense. Literally. I passed the exact same building four times before I realised it. And when I stopped in front of it, I guess the story finally lined up properly.

"Ellimist..."

**Yes, Rachel?**

The voice filled up every molecule of substance around me, making my limbs tingle and my bones shake. Time froze, and a tiny blue swirl coalesced in front of me into the tiny little man that the Ellimist used to communicate with us.

"What the hell is this?" Seemed like the right foot to start off on...

**What, exactly, are you referring to, my dear child?**

Believe me, after dealing with this guy so many times over the three years of the war, the mystery really wore thin. "You know exactly what I mean." I admit it. I was mad. Haven't you heard of my reputation? "One second, I'm on the Blade Ship, using my last breath to say... Goodbye... And the next, I'm sitting on a bus, two years later, and everyone on the planet is mourning me like some great martyr!"

**And?**

I could feel the vein in my temple twitching. "AND?! You bring me back to life, and you don't even have the common decency to do it some time close to the day I died! How am I supposed to... I don't know how... And what if..."

I sucked hard, trying to get my breathing under control as my heart pounded in my ears. There it was, wasn't it? Out loud, and in the open.

How does a dead girl return to life?

**You know that I can't interfere. So what do you really want?**

"Can't interfere, my ass..." I muttered. I felt weak. Yes, me. Mighty Rachel, and my knees were threatening to give out from under me. I sat back against the wall, fighting to get a hold on my runaway pulse. "What... Should I do? Who do I go to? Who will even believe me...?"

The little gnome-man looked at me, a tiny, innocent smile appearing on his wrinkled face. **I think that maybe you'll be able to think clearer on a full stomach and a decent night's rest...**

And then he was gone.

But, as was his custom, he had shown me what he wanted me to do. Because across from me, on the other side of the street, was a building that I was very familiar with. I'd seen it on one of our last missions. One for Tobias...

The crisis center. Downstairs. But upstairs, there was a church, and attached to that was a homeless shelter. That's not what he was showing me, though. He was showing me the way, in his own backwards fashion.

The crisis center. Loren.

Tobias' mother.

Hope.

* * *

A/N: Just for those who're interested, the divergence point in this story is the Blade Ship being destroyed after the battle. R&R, and thanks for reading. Stay Frosty. -E. Red


End file.
